The goal of this proposal is to investigate the relationship between antihypertensive (AHT) drug use and physical functioning, health status, and medical care utilization in patients' later years. The study uses social, social psychological, medical status and utilization, physical functioning, and sociodemographic data from a three-wave health survey of the SHMO population. Medical utilization, health status and prescription drug use data will be obtained from medical and pharmacy records beginning one year prior to the survey. The specific aims of the project are to: 1) determine the exposure to AHT and antidepressant (ADT) drug use; 2) compare patient's ability to perform activities of daily living between groups of patients using different beta-blockers, especially focusing on comparisons between a) cardiospecific and non-cardiospecific and b) lipid soluble and non-lipid soluble drug products, and; 4) perform exploratory analyses to examine the relationship between a) high levels of depressive symptomatology b) exposure to ADT drug use and AHT drugs. The elderly study population will be the approximately 5,000 Medicare recipients enrolled in the SHMO demonstration project at Kaiser Permanente in Portland, OR as of July 1988. The basic approach begins with a description of the population and a comparison of the population in terms of the exposure rate to different AHT drug use. Analysis of variance will be used to examine the bivariate relationship between physical functioning and the different drug therapies. When the objective is to determine the separate and combined effects of the independent variables on the dependent variables, multivariate techniques including logistic and multiple regression will be used. The general approach will be to identify problems of the elderly that appear to be related to the use of various drugs and drug classes. This approach will be used to develop and demonstrate techniques to minimize or eliminate the problems.